The Fnac Darty group. OceanProd / stock.adobe.com
A dispute in the United Kingdom affected the company’s results.
The Fnac Darty group announced on Thursday that it had fallen into the red in 2022 with a net loss of 32 million euros, due to a court decision in the United Kingdom concerning the sale in 2012 of the company Comet. In this case, the British justice “sought reimbursement of £89.6million(about 101.7 million euros), plus interest, according to Fnac Darty. “We paid but contested this decision“, told AFP the general manager of the group, Enrique Martinez. Fnac Darty specified in its financial communication that it had disbursed a total of 132 million euros “in this dispute“.
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The conflict opposes the group to the judicial liquidator of a former subsidiary of Darty, Comet. The latter had been sold by the British group Kesa Electricals, then owner of Darty, in 2012, then had closed. Fnac Darty’s sales are down slightly by 1.2%, to 7.95 billion euros, in 2022.in a context of tensions on purchasing power linked to a high level of inflation“. This turnover is in line with what was announced in mid-January during a warning on the company’s results.
The distributor expects its sales to be still “down slightlyin the first half of 2023, with asteep rise in costs” in parallel. The CEO also responded to AFP about an article by BFM Business published Thursday morning. The business media quoted unnamed sources as saying that Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, already the group’s second largest shareholder, was “ready to buy Fnac Darty“.
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Explaining that it would only benot very delicate on (his) part to take the side of one shareholder rather than anotherMr. Martinez said he had “good relations with its shareholders“. “As long as there are no concrete things, we as management cannot position ourselves“, he added. “The theme of market consolidation is still alive, and Fnac Darty is able to be a player and active in this market.“, he still told AFP.